It’s the 21th largest oil company in the world with over 8,900 km of pipeline. It’s one of India’s most valuable brands.

Talk about oil, and adjectives that come to mind are – slippery, dense, dirty. Famed and respected? Not sure?! But when the Incas called it ‘liquid gold’, they certainly understood the power it could generate. And going by the fact that Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOCL) garnered revenues and profits to the tune of $54.28 billion and $2.25 billion respectively during FY10 alone, the corporation seems to have long understood why the Incas were known for their prosperity!

In fact, the value of the IndianOil brand is not just limited to its commercial role as an energy provider but straddles the entire gamut of exploration & production, refining, transportation & marketing, petrochemicals & natural gas and downstream marketing. It’s a brand that generates immediate trust in minds of Indians! And why not? Battling against odds in a challenging business environment (thanks to last year’s slowdown), India’s No.1 commercial enterprise and flagship oil major, IndianOil notched up another year of sterling performance for FY2009-10. It not only once again outperformed other Indian corporates to lead the pack (followed by biggies like RIL, SBI, BPCL, HPCL, Tata Steel, ONGC and Tata Motors) in Fortune ‘Global 500’ listing of the world’s largest companies by sales for the year 2010, but also got listed as India’s ‘Most Trusted Brand’ in the ‘Gasoline’ category in a Readers’ Digest-AC Nielsen Survey. What’s more? Ranked at 125, IndianOil emerged as the 21st largest petroleum company in the world in the Fortune’s list. In fact, the brand has steadfastly climbed from 226 in the year 2002 to 191 in 2003, 189 in 2004 to 170 in 2005, 153 in 2006, 135 in 2007, 116 in 2008 and 105 in 2009 in the Fortune ‘Global 500’ club.

This all has been possible because it dared to get into brand differentiation of petroleum and oil. Petroleum was an unglamorous business, a commodity arena where brands had no role to play, at least in India. But IOCL changed that paradigm through its continuous efforts at building its brand and establishing itself as a trusted name. The ever popular ‘Servo’ brand of lubes is one such example (leave aside brands like Indane LPG, XtraPremium petrol, XtraMile diesel) of how sound investment in branding and an unflinching focus on the customer can create marketing magic. “There are two aspects to our promotion to promote brands which need support by way of ads and through brand building strategies,” an IndianOil official tells 4Ps B&M. The approach, besides the run-of-the-mill dealer incentives and on-field activities, involves agreements with other trusted brands like Citibank and Coca Cola, which further helps IOCL leverage its brand image.

Steel, Motors, Chemicals, Consultancy Services, Power, Teleservices, Housing... add any of these (and more) to the ‘Tata’ brand name, and it mirrors trust!

Tata Nano

Three years back, whenever Ratan Tata spoke about his Nano dream, you would have heard people classify the star-gazer’s project, a quixotic pipe-dream. It seemed an impossible peak to conquer. Then the slowdown marred 2008 occured. It was a time when the world weathered the worst phase that macroeconomics had to offer since World War II. To make matters worse, repayment problems (to both creditors & suppliers) became the impedimenta for the group’s two flagship brands – Tata Steel & Tata Motors. The situation had worsened to such an extent that Tata had to seek financial help (amounting to £1 billion) from the UK government to save the Jaguar-Land Rover (JLR) brands. Ratan Tata’s inorganic aspitations had started looking more like an ignis fatuus. The Tata brand was under threat. But amidst this turmoil, a shrinking global economy, Ratan Tata stood tall. He showed no fear. When UK’s most renowned agency Brand Finance came out with its annual valuation of the world’s top 100 brands in 2009, it showed how the second half of 2008 had played havoc on the best of global brands; some of them had lost almost 60% of their value in a matter of a year. In all, the top 100 had lost 24% of their value (y-o-y). Tata, the only Indian brand that made the list, had only lost a lesser 16% and had actually moved up the ranking, with a brand value of $9.92 billion. A year later, it is still India’s most valuable brand on Brand finance’s list, having appreciated by 13% (y-o-y) to touch $11.21 billion. The ICMR-4Ps B&M ranking proves the same.

The past year has seen brand Tata grow in leaps, be it either the deliveries of the much-awaited Nano (which boosted Tata Motors’ equity by making it the second-largest seller of passenger vehicles in the Indian market) or the inorganic moves of Tata, which finally started showing promise during 2009. Of course, many buy the fact that it is the calculative Tata management’s inorganic strategies have made a huge contribution to building the goodwill that won this brand the 2010 Most Valuable brand crown. [It was #2 last year.] Says Prof. Alison Richard, Vice-Chancellor, University of Cambridge (UK), “In going global, various details are important to note, like the right time to venture and the choice of target. I think the Tatas do this sort of homework very well, which help its brand appreciate in value. For instance, when they acquired Daewoo, it was a loss-making company, but had the potential to make inroads for Tata into markets like Korea. And that’s exactly what has happened.”

So what are the key forces that gave the brand the desired torque? Recent quarters have seen a revival in the financials of Tata Steel’s Corus subsidiary, with the company reporting a consolidated bottomline of `1,825 crore in Q2, FY2010 – a happier tale than the loss of `2,209 crore that it posted in Q2, FY2009. The reason for this is obvious. With the revival of European market’s economic engine (fuelled by the automotive, construction, engineering and aerospace businesses), Tata Steel’s UK entity is finally up and running. All this, after a painstaking integration process, lasting three years. The company has even managed to lighten its interest liabilities by 32% (y-o-y) to Rs.597 crore as of date.

Mills & Boon has always had a cult following among readers and generations after generations girls have been obsessed with the talk, dark & handsome princes featured in your books who come as the night in shining armours and save the poor girl. In today’s modern era is the audience still looking for these saviours or has the book lovers appetite changed?Mills and Boon heroes still play a very pivotal role in the plot. He must be charismatic and supremely attractive, often wealthy and powerful. But the heroine herself has changed. Our heroines are now modern women with a career and a mind of their own and are looking for an enduring romantic relationship on their terms. So naturally the prince charming had to do more now than to just look good.

How big is the Indian market for you considering Harlequin Mills & Boon books are sold in over 25 languages in over 100 countries on 6 continents?The Indian market is growing very fast and the English language market is also growing at 10% per annum. Then here 60% of the population is youth and unlike in the past they make their own decisions. So there’s a great potential and we think we have a lot of options to explore in the market. If we take the global sales, I think in case of India, we are close to 10% and in the last few years we have almost doubled our sales in India.

What is the TG that you are catering to in India?We have readership from the age of 16 to 60 years. We have different product offerings for different age groups. Like Modern is a series that talks about international affairs, while Desire is all about seduction and passion. Romance series talk about romance and emotion, and then we have Special Moments that emphasises on relationships.

Any plans of launching books in Hindi or any other regional language in the near future?We are already publishing in 26 languages. Our research shows that there is a very small market for Hindi readers, but we are open for the future because it is a promising market.

What is your distribution strategy in India?We’ve a unique distribution model in India and worldwide. We have exclusive distribution arrangements with Living Media Pvt. Ltd., which is part of the India Today group. Our distribution strategy is unique because we follow the magazine kind of a model, wherein new titles are introduced every month and the old ones are recollected. This model gives viewers a new product every time. We follow the cascading distribution model. The Indian operations are responsible for the whole of south Asia. Books are also sold to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and the books that are recollected are not sold back in India.

Is your pricing strategy for selling in India the same as in other parts of the world?Yes, the strategy in India is the same as around the world. Habitual consumers indicate multiple purchasing habits, so we need to make the books affordable because nobody reads one and nobody reads for one month. The books were costlier earlier because then we were exporting books but now they are much cheaper. Previously they were being sold at `250 and now they are sold for `99 only.